White Thanksgiving
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Oneshot. There are worse ways to spend Thanksgiving than snowed in with your best friend, even if nothing works out as planned.


White Thanksgiving

Severide had heard Casey's pickup pull up to the curb late in the afternoon, but Casey never came up. He looked out the window to the street below and saw the truck was still there, and it looked like Casey never got out of it. It had been alternating all day between rain, snow, ice and sleet and at times it did two at once, most of it had melted from the rain though some parts of the city down below were starting to turn white. Kelly decided he better go down and find out what was going on. He put on his coat and headed outside, watching his step along the sidewalk that was already slick in parts, and saw Casey in the driver's seat looking down at something, looking like he'd just lost everything.

Kelly rapped on the window and Casey jolted, and looked, Kelly motioned for him to roll down the window.

"I wouldn't recommend sleeping out here, you'll get frozen in," Kelly joked. But Casey wasn't laughing. Kelly's smirk dropped as he tried to figure out what the problem was.

"What's wrong, Casey?" he asked earnestly, "what's the matter?"

Casey just looked at him for a few seconds, then glanced away, and looked back at him as he answered, "I forgot to stop by the store before last shift and get the rest of the stuff for dinner. And I forgot to go this morning before I left for that construction job. I was going to go when I got done, but it ran on longer than I planned, and by then it was already sleeting...and I just about went off the road getting from there to here, I couldn't get to the store, I'm sorry."

Kelly started to laugh, but the look on Matt's face put an end to it real quick as he saw just how much this was bothering his friend.

"Casey it's alright, we've got the turkey, that's the main thing."

"The rest of it's going to be bare bones," Casey said, "no rolls, no sweet potatoes, no pie, no-"

"It'll be fine," Kelly assured him.

"I'm an idiot," Casey groaned, "I knew we'd run out of time, I knew the weather would get bad, I knew waiting until the last minute was a dumb idea..."

"Casey, _I_ have a car too, I could've gone and gotten the rest of it, this isn't on you," Kelly told him. "Now come on, let's get inside before the storm gets worse."

Hesitantly, Casey stepped down from the truck and followed Kelly inside to warm up.

* * *

"Casey will you stop moping? I told you everything's going to be fine," Kelly told him as he opened the cupboards over the sink and browsed through them, "We've got a 20 pound turkey, we've got...almost, everything we need for the stuffing, we've got potatoes, we've got all the essentials."

"But what about the rest of it?" Casey asked.

"We'll improvise," Kelly said.

Casey sat at the table and groaned. Kelly turned and saw the captain grabbing fistfuls of his hair and tugging on it.

"Casey, it's not that bad. I've never gone much for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner anyway," he said as he turned back to what he was doing and rifled through the contents of the cupboard, "the years I had to be with Benny for the holiday, he didn't have the patience to cook a turkey, so we either went out to a restaurant, or we'd stay home, he'd take a fish out of the freezer and bake it." He turned back and asked Casey, "Think about it, how many traditional Thanksgivings did you actually have growing up?"

Casey looked at him but wouldn't answer.

"See? It's no big deal."

"That's just it," Casey said, "We didn't have a lot of them back then either, that's _why_ I wanted everything to go right _this time_ for Thanksgiving when we were off shift and could actually enjoy it."

Kelly looked back at Matt with a sympathetic expression on his face and he told Casey, "I get it, Matt, and I appreciate it, but tradition is overrated, and it's open to interpretation. We're going to have a great meal tomorrow and then _next_ year we'll do traditional."

"Next year we'll be on shift," Casey pointed out with a small whine.

"Even better, the new guy can do all the cooking," Kelly responded with a smirk on his face.

"I just feel so stupid that I forgot to get everything. I've been swamped all week with this construction job and trying to get it done around shift and before the snow came in," Casey said as he got up from the table and went over to Kelly to see what he was doing.

What Severide was doing was taking several cans out of the cupboard and stacking them on the counter.

"We're still gonna eat till we puke tomorrow," Kelly told him, "we got Cool Whip, right?"

"Yeah, but no pie."

"Don't need it, we got Jello and mandarin oranges."

"What do you do with that?" Casey made a face.

"You whip it together and chill it until it sets up...it's good, trust me. We got vegetables, we got eggs, we got a can of biscuits in the fridge." Kelly turned his head and saw Casey had his head tilted down towards the floor and his eyes almost completely closed, as if trying to block out something. Kelly reached over and nudged his shoulder and when Casey looked at him he said, "Hey, it's Thanksgiving...you want to know what I'm thankful for?"

"What?" Casey asked.

Kelly looked him in the eyes and answered, "That this was just a 'I got busy and forgot' thing instead of 'I got hit in the head and I can't remember' thing. That was a bad time back then."

It took Casey a few seconds to realize what Kelly was talking about, then it all came flooding back, the beam falling on him, waking up after the surgery, the month of recovery and the rough patch he had after being cleared when his memory still lapsed constantly.

"It was scary," he said simply.

Kelly's eyes softened and he nodded, "I know. Things are a lot better this year."

"I don't know that I'd say that," Casey told him. "In the past year, my wife ran out on me, my apartment was set on fire with me in it, I lost my home, I lost everything, every single woman I've been with since then has been a mistake, my ex-wife comes back and I come _this_ close to making _another_ mistake with her...I think it was better _then_. Yes, I had problems, but I had a home, _my_ home, I had a wife, I had a good marriage-"

"It wasn't that good, don't kid yourself," Kelly said through the side of his mouth.

"But I had everything back then, I have nothing now," Casey said. "How can you say that this year is so much better?"

Kelly looked at him through the corner of one eye and asked mischievously, "You really want to know?"

"Yeah, how?" Casey asked.

Kelly smiled at him and answered, "Because I got my best friend living with me. Who's fully recovered from an old head injury that could've killed him, in perfect health, who got home alive and in one piece tonight, it doesn't get any better than that."

A humbled expression formed on Matt's face as he took this in, for a split second Kelly saw Casey's eyes glistening in reflection from the light overhead, Matt quickly closed his eyes and blinked away the thin layer of tears that were trying to form. Kelly reached over and lightly squeezed Casey's shoulder assuredly.

"You're right," Casey said as he opened his eyes again, "I know you're right...it's just...I had everything planned, it was going to be great..."

"It's okay, I get it," Kelly told him.

He did. Even 20 years of all the snafus in their private lives and on the job at CFD, they still hadn't gotten used to the fact that most things would never turn out the way they planned, and no matter how many times it already happened, it was always frustrating when those plans fell apart for whatever reason. And especially after the year Casey had had, it made sense he wanted _this_ of all things to finally go right.

"Are we on shift for Christmas?" Kelly asked.

Casey thought for a minute, and shook his head, "No."

"Okay, then we'll do it then, a month is plenty of time to get everything ready," Severide told him. "You feel better now?"

"I guess." It was obvious though that it would be a while before Casey actually got out of the funk he was in.

"Come on, let's get started on dinner, after that we start work on the bird," Kelly said.

* * *

Even though Casey had pulled the innards out of turkeys for the better part of 20 years, he still found himself grimacing as Kelly struggled to rip out the neck, heart and liver from inside the turkey.

"Do we _really_ need to cook this stuff?" he asked, not able to take his eyes off the neck that was twice the size of a normal one.

Kelly used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow after nearly tearing the bird apart just to get his hand down in the holes on both ends, he looked at Casey and told him, "Check the cupboard, is there a jar of gravy in there?"

Casey checked, "One, but it's for beef, not turkey."

"Eh, it all eats the same on potatoes, let's try it," Kelly said, "and to hell with that," he added as he tossed the huge neck straight into the trash can and chucked the heart and liver behind it.

Casey chuckled as he went back to chopping celery and onions for the stuffing, then dumped them and a stick of butter into a pot of boiling water.

"So explain the Jello thing to me again. You mix the Jello and you let it set and _then_ put the Cool Whip in?"

"Only enough that it's not pure water, as soon as it starts to gel at all, then you put it and the oranges in, otherwise it won't be any good."

"Hey, how'd you figure out how to improvise this quick?" Casey asked.

"Besides the fact I'm a fireman and that's what I do?" Kelly replied as he bent over the turkey and examined it for any stray feathers needing plucking.

"Yes," Casey replied.

Kelly surprised him by answering, "When Benny walked out on us it was rough on me and my mom, money was tight, some years we didn't have all the essentials at Thanksgiving. One year, she didn't get her check until right before Thanksgiving, by which time all the turkeys were gone."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, so, she got this huge chicken instead and baked it...and feel free to take note I have not said anything so far about her being a great cook."

"So noted," Casey said.

"The chicken was huge because it was a stewing chicken."

"Uh oh."

"Yeah, thing was tough as leather when it came out of the oven. My mom sends me outside, but I can still hear her screaming from inside. I sneak in the kitchen door and she's in her room crying and cursing Benny. And I feel bad because I know she's gone to all this trouble to try and make everything nice for me. So...she fell asleep after a while, and I start thinking maybe there's some way to salvage the dinner. So I look through the cupboards and the freezer to see if there's anything that can fix this...I come up with a jar of cheese sauce, a can of mixed vegetables, and a bag of hash browns...and at this time I barely know how to cook but I get the idea maybe mixing all this together will actually be something we can eat. I cut some hunks off the chicken and mutilate it so it'll be too small to be tough, and mix everything together," Casey was already starting to laugh in anticipation of what was coming next, "And I pour it all in this metal brownie pan of my mom's, and thank God I did because when I went to put it in the oven it was so heavy I dropped it. Everything stayed in place, but my mom came running because she thought I set myself on fire with the stove or something. And I figure she's going to beat my ass because at this point she still doesn't quite trust me with the stove or the knives or much of anything in the kitchen."

"How old were you?" Casey asked.

"11."

"Oh."

"And I tell her what I did, expecting the worst...and she just looks at me and says 'We'll need dessert', so she got out a brownie mix, and a can of cherry pie filling, mixed them into the batter, baked them, and while it's all cooking, she scours the cupboards and puts me to work making plates for the appetizers, which is a box of crackers, a jar of pickles, whatever vegetables were in the crisper, and a bottle of salad dressing for dip. It was one of the _weirdest_ looking meals you ever saw...but it turned out to be good...and, it was one of the best Thanksgiving I had with my mom."

Casey pursed his lips tight together in a sheepish smile as he took the full story in.

Kelly looked at his best friend, and felt some relief. He'd known something was up when he saw the expression on Casey's face when he got him, he remembered it all too well, it was the same look his mom had when she saw how the chicken turned out and realized her plans to give them a good Thanksgiving were ruined. He'd hated seeing that look back then, and he'd hated seeing it again now.

"You feel better now?" he asked.

Casey nodded hesitantly, "Yeah...but I still feel like an idiot for not getting to the store earlier."

"You'll feel better in the morning," Kelly told him. "Everything's going to come together, you'll see."

* * *

The turkey was put in the oven at midnight so it'd be ready for lunch the next day. And as the night wore on, the weather outside got worse, earlier on during the evening the wind picked up and started howling. And it never really stopped, it would die down for a while, then it would be whistling against the building like an old horror movie.

Kelly had gone to bed shortly after the turkey went in, and he expected to sleep until the morning. But he was interrupted by the sound of somebody knocking on his door. He got out of bed, opened the bedroom door and saw Casey standing in the doorway.

"Stupid question," Casey said.

"Okay?" Kelly tiredly blinked.

"Can I stay with you tonight?"

"Huh?"

Then Kelly thought he got the answer why. The wind was still blowing loudly and it sounded even worse in the living room, like the whole apartment might bust wide open at any minute.

"Sure, come on in," he said as he held the door.

Casey went over to the unoccupied side of the bed and pulled the covers up tight, Kelly went back to his own side, rolled the covers back up and got settled down.

"Goodnight, Casey."

"Goodnight."

Even though the wind was howling as loudly in that corner of the apartment, the noise outside kept them up off and on through the night. The wind blew harder and the screeching noises got louder, at one point it got so loud that both firemen pulled the covers up over their heads in an attempt to block it out.

* * *

"Uh oh."

"What is it?" Kelly opened his eyes and first noticed how bright the room was. He looked over and saw Casey staring out the window, which was entirely white. He got out of bed and went over beside Casey and saw that it had snowed so much and the wind had blown so hard last night, that the snow stuck to the entire window and they couldn't see anything.

They went out to the living room and opened the blinds and saw it was more the same. Every window was pitch white, they couldn't see anything of the outside world, just a sheet of snow clinging to the glass.

"This is disturbing," Casey noted.

"So I guess we're snowed in for the day," Kelly said. Even before the heavy snow it had been just about impossible to get out there due to the ice, he wasn't sure how much snow had fallen overnight, but he knew there was no way in hell they were going out in this, and he felt sorry for anybody who did.

He turned his head and saw Casey still blankly staring ahead at the whitened panes.

"Case, you okay?"

"Huh?" Matt turned towards him.

"You _have_ been in a whiteout before, haven't you?" Kelly asked.

Casey glanced back at the window and nodded.

"In time gravity will take its course and the snow will fall off and then we'll be able to see out, it's no big deal."

"I know...it...I'm not claustrophobic, but this...just never get used to it."

"I know," Kelly nodded. Even he had to admit it was freaky to be above the ground floor and not able to see out the window. But he knew it was nothing to worry about, and since they didn't have to be anywhere that day anyway, it didn't matter.

"Come on," Kelly told him, "let's check the turkey."

Casey nodded and finally pulled himself away from the window.

* * *

Matt had gotten a shower after breakfast, figuring he might as well take advantage of the hot water just incase the storm got worse and they lost the power. After he got dressed he went to the kitchen and didn't see Severide anywhere, but he saw several pots cooking on the stove, he lifted the lids one at a time, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and carrots cooking in, he took a whiff of the steam coming off them, honey, and butter, and a little lemon too.

He went to the fridge to see what else they had to get ready for lunch, and he paused and looked in awe at the plates laid out in the fridge all wrapped in plastic. He took them out one by one and set them on the table to examine the contents: deviled eggs, pickles and olives, carrots, cherry tomatoes and celery with a bowl of ranch dressing in between.

"I told you," Casey jumped at the sudden sound of Kelly's voice and he turned on his heel and saw Severide standing in the doorway, "I told you everything would be fine. We got plenty to eat, and it still falls in the realm of 'traditional'. It could've been a lot worse, Casey."

"Yeah, how?"

"It could've been popcorn and toast and pretzel sticks.

Casey rushed Kelly and playfully punched at him telling him, "I knew you were going to say that, I _knew_ you were going to say that, 'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving'?"

Kelly laughed as he tried to dodge the jabs to his sides and merely said, "I figured it'd get a laugh out of you."

Casey let out a slight laugh under his breath as he stepped back, and he told Kelly, "I feel like an idiot for the way I acted last night."

"I told you you'd feel better today," Kelly said with a small smirk. "Believe me, Casey, I get it, holidays are stressful, especially when you try to get everything to go right and they don't...but I knew we could come up with a close second...and if I do say so myself," he added with a smug grin, "I don't think we're doing too badly."

Casey laughed self consciously and said, "It'll be perfect. What's left?"

"Potatoes will be done soon, all we have to do now is bake the biscuits and heat the gravy."

"Thanks, Kelly."

Severide noticed the glint in Casey's eyes as they started to well up again, but Matt didn't seem to be aware of it. Kelly reached over and patted him once on the back and told him, "Happy Thanksgiving, Casey."

* * *

The meal was delicious, both men ate until they were well past stuffed, they left the rest of the food where it was to heat up for dinner, they did up the few dishes there were not holding down the leftovers, and then settled down on the couch. The snow was still plastered to every window and they still couldn't see out, but it was starting to bother them less than before.

"So, what do we watch?" Kelly asked as he grabbed the remote, "Football...football, or-"

Casey stole the remote from him and scrolled through the channels and stopped at a black and white version of "A Christmas Carol" that was on.

"Hey, look at this," Casey said. "Isn't this a little early?"

"Or this," Kelly said, resolving himself to the fact that football was now out of the question. He surprisingly found it easy to be drawn in to watching the Scrooge on the screen with wild hair and large bug eyes reacting hilariously to the antics of the ghost visiting him. He didn't offhand remember the movie but something about it seemed familiar, maybe something he'd seen on TV as a kid with his parents. Parent_s_, boy that _was_ a long time ago.

He leaned back against the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table and enjoyed the movie. Towards the end of it he looked over and saw Casey had fallen asleep with his head slumped down. Kelly reached for the blanket draped on the top of the couch and draped it over Matt, then picked up the remote, turned the volume down and switched over to the football game.

* * *

Dinner was just as delicious as lunch had been, the leftovers that remained were put in the fridge for tomorrow and a bigger batch of dishes was done that night. As it got late, Casey was getting the couch made up when Kelly came out from his bedroom and said to Casey, "One more time won't be anymore awkward than the first, will it?"

"Huh?" Casey turned towards him.

Kelly nodded his head towards the bedroom and told him, "Come on."

It took Casey a couple seconds to figure out what Kelly was saying, then he grabbed the blanket for the couch and took it with him.

Matt got settled under the covers and made a small sound of amusement. "So this is what it's like for all the women who spend the night with you."

"Don't flatter yourself, you're not as cute as any of them," Kelly replied teasingly.

Casey feigned a small whine of offense, then lightly chuckled under his breath.

"So, you have a good time today?" Kelly asked.

Casey looked at the ceiling and nodded, "Better than most of the ones I had growing up."

"Me too," he added.

"Thanks, Kelly."

"No problem, besides, Christmas it's your turn."

Casey laughed.

* * *

The next morning the snow had started to slide down the windows so they could see out through the top halves anyway. Outside everything was white but nothing was buried, but people were still slow to get outside, clear the sidewalks, defrost their cars, etc.

"I'll go see if I can get my truck started," Casey said as he put on his coat.

"If not we might have to call in sick," Kelly suggested.

Casey chuckled as he grabbed his keys.

"Hey, Kelly."

"Yeah?"

Casey paused just before he reached the door, and turned back to face him. "It really was a great time yesterday, thanks."

"You're welcome."


End file.
